Here's a picture of the pattern on top of a body blank that has a Fender Strat chalked on it. Notice the size difference.

OK, starting off here with putting forth a bad first impression. First of all, the wood supplier chalked a Fender Jazz Bass on the blank, not a strat, (I should know better, my first and only self-directed guitar build in the 80's was a strat!) and that Jazz bass has a BIG body by its inherent nature. So, I assumed that A4 is the setting that was supposed to be used so perhaps this is actually the correct size? 

Sorry guys, it's been so long since I built one, 30 yrs ago, and it was crap too, LOL. 

And I am super excited about doing this so I need to chill and "dress up slowly because I am in a hurrry". 

I am thinking it may indeed be the correct size afterall. I printed at 100% scaling on A4 setting, but I used American Letter sized paper. I still wonder if the latter is causing a slight scaling issue though. Thoughts? 

@petejb when I was printing patterns I didn't think to change the settings on my printer. It printed then in "letter" size and then I measured them and found that was too small. When I printed them again and choose the a4 size they measured the proper thing. I believe there are actual measurements on the drawings or somewhere. Double check them with and actual ruler. 

Posted by: @bpower

@petejb when I was printing patterns I didn't think to change the settings on my printer. It printed then in "letter" size and then I measured them and found that was too small. When I printed them again and choose the a4 size they measured the proper thing. I believe there are actual measurements on the drawings or somewhere. Double check them with and actual ruler. 

Thanks, I changed the size of the PDF to A4, but the master settings for the laptop were still set to letter. Once I defaulted the system printer setting to A4 it printed larger. 

Posted by: @petejb

First of all, the wood supplier chalked a Fender Jazz Bass on the blank

@petejb Pete, the Bandsman body size is not that big, I just printed the pdf as it is, I think it came out in four pieces, which I taped together. I then used a big piece of tracing paper to trace the shape. The paper our UK printers use is A4. 
This website gives you some common sizes and dimensions. 
https://www.prepressure.com/library/paper-size  

For some perspective, here is one of my Bandsman guitars (the striped red and pink one) alongside a couple of Strat bodies, a Tele and a Jazz bass. 👍 

Hope this helps. 👍 

Boo. 

Posted by: @boo

Posted by: @petejb

First of all, the wood supplier chalked a Fender Jazz Bass on the blank

@petejb Pete, the Bandsman body size is not that big, I just printed the pdf as it is, I think it came out in four pieces, which I taped together. I then used a big piece of tracing paper to trace the shape. The paper our UK printers use is A4. 
This website gives you some common sizes and dimensions. 
https://www.prepressure.com/library/paper-size  

For some perspective, here is one of my Bandsman guitars (the striped red and pink one) alongside a couple of Strat bodies, a Tele and a Jazz bass. 👍 

Hope this helps. 👍 

Boo. 

Yeah, I figured it out. It is a smaller body guitar but given this is my true first under expert instruction that's an advantage IMO. Nice craftsmanship by the way! Very impressive. 

Thanks. 

Posted by: @petejb

Yeah, I figured it out. It is a smaller body guitar but given this is my true first under expert instruction that's an advantage IMO. Nice craftsmanship by the way! Very impressive. 

@petejb Thanks man, you will soon get the hang of it, it’s truly addictive in a good way. 👍

Posted by: @boo

Posted by: @petejb

Yeah, I figured it out. It is a smaller body guitar but given this is my true first under expert instruction that's an advantage IMO. Nice craftsmanship by the way! Very impressive. 

@petejb Thanks man, you will soon get the hang of it, it’s truly addictive in a good way. 👍

Given the obscene price of wood I have decided to do a trial run using hard pine (actually something knot-less, LOL) or something like that. I bought two large slabs of Mahogany and 2 4x4x30 Mahogany neck blanks and I am going to slice the latter into two (cost savings) with the band saw as they too cost me a small fortune. Also picked up extra radiused and prepared rosewood blanks and a radiused ebony fretboard (for later) to save on inflation costs. I can plane the neck blanks after splitting in tow. Just hope that losing 3/16-1/8 of an inch or doesn't kill me on the thickness required. Will it? The blanks are actually 4 3/16 wide so I have some wiggle room for the cut and the planer. My bandsaw blade is very thin and it runs a good straight cut with the fence. 

So yeah, I plan on practicing with junkwood first. 

Posted by: @petejb

Given the obscene price of wood I have decided to do a trial run using hard pine (actually something knot-less, LOL) or something like that.

@petejb Yeah, nothing wrong with doing that, I’ve done it a few times. I copied a guitar from pictures on the internet, so I used some pine as a prototype. It worked out pretty well so I’ll use some better wood to build a proper one when I get the time. It’s surprising how many people have bits of wood in their garages, sheds etc that are willing to give you once they hear about what you are doing, I’ve built up quite a collection of freebies now. 👍

Posted by: @petejb

I can plane the neck blanks after splitting in tow. Just hope that losing 3/16-1/8 of an inch or doesn't kill me on the thickness required. Will it? The blanks are actually 4 3/16 wide so I have some wiggle room for the cut and the planer.

@petejb I always struggle with the imperial measurement system and have to do conversions whenever they appear. I went to school in the ‘70s and ‘80s (in England, UK), so we got taught to do everything in the metric system. So trying to understand the imperial system now is like trying to learn a different language. 😆 It’s easy enough to do conversions though so not really a major problem. 👍

Posted by: @boo

I always struggle with the imperial measurement system and have to do conversions whenever they appear

Hi Boo,

Get yourself an HP35s calculator. Not only can you enter and multiply vulgar fractions, convert them to decimal and then to metric, you can also display the result in fraction form, although why anyone would want to do this is beyond me! Did you know, for example, that 22 3/32 multiplied by 6 13/16 works out at 150 263/512 or 150.5137? If the original fractions were in inches then the metric equivalent would be 3823.3047mm Fascinating or what?!

You will have to get your head around Reverse Polish notation (no '=' button) but once you've cleared that hurdle and have understood how 'number stacks' work, you'll never go back. Oh, and no one will ever steal your calculator again!

BTW I think I may have just set a new Captcha record. Has anyone had to do more than 8 to gain entry to these hallowed halls? Am I on a list somewhere? My 'scan as you shop' record in Tescos is about 75% in favour of a security check! I don't bother now, it takes longer than queuing up at a till!

Darren

PS I spent yesterday dusting off and tweaking my pliage machine. That can only mean one thing.......

Posted by: @darrenking

Get yourself an HP35s calculator. Not only can you enter and multiply vulgar fractions, convert them to decimal and then to metric, you can also display the result in fraction form, although why anyone would want to do this is beyond me!

@darrenking No, you're alright thanks, I'll stick to counting on my fingers. Thanks for the example though. 

😂😂😂😂

Some important guitar making measurement nomenclature to know:

• 'A Gnat's Nadger' = A tiny bit - It's no problem...e.g. 'It's a gnat's nadger longer than expected but that is OK.'
• 'A Midges Cock' = Like 'A Gnat's Nadger' but much more annoying...e.g. 'ARG...It's only short by a MIDGE'S COCK but we're all gonna die!!'
• 'Close Enough for Rock and Roll' = Close enough for our purposes
• 'Close Enough for Jazz' = It doesn't matter
• 'Close Enough for BeeBop' = Nobody cares
• 'A good inch' = 'A Gnat's Nadger' more than an inch (or any other measurement)...e.g. 'Ooft - that was a good six inches!'
• 'That will do' = Perfect!
• 'Perfect!' = 'Phew...We fixed it'

Does anyones else know any that I missed?

@markbailey you got me rolling on the ground in stitches! Good one

Job done=Forget about it and move on

Had a lot midges cock but managed to get it perfect. Phew. Almost every build in fact. I think that’s the reason why I build so much, because I want to go through life knowing I do not experience the midges cocks. Haha

@petejb paper size does not matter. It prints out full scale regardless of paper size as long as you print in adobe acrobat and click poster size and will print it out in several sheets for you to tape up together. Works in all pdf formats that you can attain online.

Paper size does not matter on Adobe Acrobat reader as long as you print it on poster size

Posted by: @clinton

@petejb paper size does not matter. It prints out full scale regardless of paper siz

So long as you don't have 'Shrink to fit' selected. This would produce fairly subtle, but important, dimensional changes between A4 and US Letter.